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Downtown Brooklyn Tapped as Global Hub for Creating Cities of the Future

October 26, 2011
N-82, 2011-12

New York University and its partners are excited to respond to the City’s request for proposals for a new school of applied sciences in New York. At the heart of this proposal is an academic program to investigate and develop solutions to the challenges that face cities around the world.

Known as the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), the program will be tied to five cities on three continents, and will position Brooklyn as the epicenter of global thinking about how cities around the world can:

• become more energy efficient;

• reduce congestion and pollution;

• use increasingly vast amounts of data more effectively and quickly to make decisions and to inform their citizens;

• enhance safety and security;

• and ensure a high quality of life.

CUSP will build on NYU’s existing presence in Downtown Brooklyn to bring together global leaders of science, technology and education in a partnership that includes Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, City University of New York (CUNY), University of Warwick, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay as well as industry leaders such as IBM, Cisco and Siemens.

“For the first time in history, most of the world’s human population lives in cities. By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s 9 billion people will live in cities,” said NYU Senior Vice President Lynne P. Brown. “The shifting population will stretch current resources and present new challenges – some of which haven’t even surfaced yet. CUSP will be at the forefront of providing solutions to these challenges, and will create an entire new industry in New York.”

"The need for better city management has never been greater and The Center for Urban Sciences and Progress provides an exciting opportunity for New York City," said Dr. Bernard Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation. "This program is adopting new approaches to accelerate the creation of skills and economic growth."

CUSP’s Brooklyn presence will, at full strength, include 50 researchers and faculty members from universities and private industry, along with more than 400 Masters students and 100 Ph.D. candidates, as well as adjuncts, post doctoral candidates and support staff. CUSP will be the first program to assemble a global consortium to focus on this area of research and development at this scale. The program will also:

launch and attract creative, urban tech businesses and jobs – driving economic growth for New York by putting it at the forefront of a $100B market;

research, invent, commercialize and export new technologies to cities around the world; London becomes our customer instead of our competitor;

create a brand new sector in New York;

conduct use-inspired applied research on key urban challenges;

create a new high-tech industry around urban applied science – vaulting NYC to world leadership in this area – and train the workforce for it;

and train a new workforce focused on researching, managing, financing and leading cities of the 21st century.

If designated by the City of New York, NYU will immediately begin building new facilities for CUSP in a 60,000 square foot space at 1 Metrotech Center in Downtown Brooklyn. Classes would begin in that space as early as September 2013.

The development plan also calls for an expansion into a fully renovated 370 Jay Street by 2016 that would provide space for business incubation as well as CUSP research and labs. The building, located adjacent to the current NYU-Poly campus at Metrotech, is currently leased to the MTA by the City of New York, and has remained virtually unused for a number of years It also is expected that additional expansion opportunities could also take place at existing and new facilities at Metrotech.

CUSP represents a major commitment by NYU to capitalize renovations, recruit faculty and students, and provide seed capital for start-ups. The project would be among the first major facilities to be developed within the NYU 2031 framework, a plan to meet NYU’s academic space needs throughout the city over the next two decades.